I visited a new church a few months ago where I didn't know anyone, and there was a woman there who seemed a little off, but it was a "spirit-filled" church, and she wasn't really acting up too much. She offered to pray for me at the end of the service and gave me the most accurate prophetic words I had ever received in my life. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but what she said seemed pretty specific to me. I was a little weirded out, but figured God really had a message for me, despite the source. When she talked to me after the service, she seemed a little off again, but everything she said while she was praying was completely logical.

I didn't see her for weeks after that, and when she did come back to the church, she was completely out of control. She went on a really irrational stream-of-consciousness rant about demons tormenting her and about certain movie stars. The pastors and church members prayed for her, and at the end, she kept talking about being delivered but she was still very irrational, talking non-stop from topic to topic, and could not calm down.

When they were praying for her, they treated it as if she was demonized, but she kept talking about how she needed to come to this church to be in the presence of God, that the Holy Spirit was here, etc. -- things I don't think a demonized person would be able to say, nor would they want to be in church at all. I think she's mentally ill, and it causes me to wonder, if God really gave me a message that day, why did he do it through her? I know that God can speak through donkeys and can speak however he wants and through whoever he wants, but why doesn't he choose a more credible source if he wants us to believe him?

I never experienced a personal, one-on-one interaction like the one you did, but we did used to have a woman attend our church who sounds just like the one you described. She would bounce back and forth between...well, cooky-ness...and something seemingly Spirit-led. But, even though she would say certain things that weren't false (at times), I have my doubts that it was the Holy Spirit...because there just was no peace when she spoke. For me, personally, it just bothered me inside.

A good period of time passed, and then she eventually acted out in a way that absolutely demanded a response - and she was told that she was not welcome at the church, again.

What comes to mind was the passage in Acts 16 (16-17): "One day as we were going down to the place of prayer, we met a demon-possessed slave girl. She was a fortune-teller who earned a lot of money for her masters. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, 'These men are servants of the Most High God, and they have come to tell you how to be saved.'”

The next verse says that this exasperated Paul. Interestingly, the girl was telling the truth. The problem was that it was not the Holy Spirit that was speaking through her.